INTRODUCTION

Michael Salmony 0:02

Welcome to the Payments Trilogue, where three seasoned professionals discuss payments and more, for Europe and beyond.

Michael Salmony 0:12

Hello, my name is Michael Salmony and I'm joined here by two good friends from the banking and payment scene. That's Gijs Boudewijn who comes from the banking side and Ralf Ohlhausen who comes more from the TPP and FinTech side. I'm an independent consultant and I've worked with a number of industries across the world on payment innovations.

And we three came together to think of maybe doing a new format, a podcast on what is going on in Europe in payments. Looked at from three different dimensions, from the banking dimension, represented by Gijs, from the FinTech dimension represented by Ralf, and me as the sort of independent observer who will then say the truth.

So I hope you will enjoy this series where we're going to look at all the things that are happening in payments in Europe and around. And maybe I can ask Gijs to take up the baton and tell you a little bit where you come from and what your hot topics are going to be. Thank you, Michael. My name is Gijs Boudewijn. My daytime job is being General Manager of the Dutch

Payments Association, a little bit broader than just banks, banks, payment institutions and money institutions. That is, I've been around in payments most of my life. I've worked at the European Banking Federation, the Payments Committee. I'm a member of the Payment Systems Market Expert Group of the European Commission. Was on the EPC Board, European Payment Council's board for quite a few years. Still chair the legal support group.

And together with one of the colleagues of Ralf, I co -chair the SEPA payment account access multi -stakeholder group. Just to name a few. So I've been around, let's say in the collective space of payments for quite some time. And the reason we're doing this as far as I'm concerned, presenting my own perspectives, not representing anyone in particular here.

that the experience over the past decades has learned that that's a fresh approach to all the issues we have at hand in payments. It's about time for a fresh approach and I think we will talk about that later on what that fresh approach could or should be.

Ralf Ohlhausen 2:49

Okay, so maybe I can pass on to Ralf. I'm sure you have similar impressive credentials and maybe you can also tell us a little bit about your thinking is for this series. Yeah, well, I know Gijs now for I don't know and well Michael obviously you too for this almost 10 years or so we're sitting often opposite sides of the table that my name is Ralf Ohlhausen for the last 10 years or so I have been

working on the fintech side of payments and open banking mainly for companies like PPRO and Tink, but I'm also consulting some other payments and service providers, typically TPPs, third party providers under PSD2 in Europe. Well, that said, I have also provided payments advice to the European Central Bank as part of their market infrastructure board for the last four years until last summer and

I have co -founded and I'm chairing the European TPP Association, ETPPA, which represents the interests of TPPs and other fintechs in Europe. also co -chairing the Berlin Group's Open Finance Advisory Board, a member of the ECB's digital euro scheme rulebook development group. And as both of you here, I'm representing just myself.

So I'm doing this solely in my own private capacity and I'm also, as you are, very interested here in trying to contribute something which is more on the collaborative side, so providing a trilogue in order to get more industry self -regulation and to have less of regulation and less of regulatory trilogues.

So this could be like a corporative trilogue not a regulatory trilogue or so across the different industries. Yeah. So that sounds great. I think everybody's got a good impression that we all have a little bit of experience in this space behind our backs. And we will launch this series of topics on payments and also looking beyond because of course everything is connected nowadays, banking and payments and even other industries.

Michael Salmony 5:09

And the first episode will be on MEPGA how to make European payments great again. So I hope you will join us for this first episode and look forward to meeting all there. Many thanks for watching and listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Looking forward to seeing you again next time.